Holt emphasises the importance of balancing risks and benefits of treatment.1 Barnett and O’Hare point out that other well established diabetes drugs are not without risk.2 They also comment that more reassuring safety analyses concerning pancreatitis were not cited, including a Cochrane review; that there is no human evidence of pancreatic cancer; and that the autopsy findings in eight patients on incretins require further validation.

In response, the main point of my article was that important safety data had not reached the public domain and had therefore been excluded from the current debate. …

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